growing up with jim & tammy

it is not what they say, but what they

don't say that haunts you for years to

come; how you are afraid you will grow up

to talk too much or too little; how you are

afraid your child will cry one day and you

will say, "it's really not that bad."

it is not what you feel, but what you don't

feel, like a wound covered so thick with cotton

you forget it's there; how you desperately pray

to wince at the penicillin shot or the bee sting

or the arrow to the heart so you, too, can feel

alive. sometimes in your dreams you'll look a man

in the clean whites of his eyes, tell him exactly

what you think, watch his mouth drip disbelief--

but somehow, even before you wake,

you always end up saying i'm sorry.

--Joy Sawyer

July/August 1996, Vol. 2, No. 4, Page 5

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Joy Sawyer